The Unfailing Import of Airy’s Failure
However, suppose we promote that observer to the post of bystander, the one rashly assumed by Gardner to authenticate the Twin Paradox, as outlined earlier. Then Dingle’s question is easily answered. The clock moving with respect to the starry dome may slow down, the one at rest relative to the Universe as a whole will not. Alas: such a promotion is not feasible. For it requires that a bystander at rest “outside” the Universe assures us that our observer is also a bystander absolutely at rest “inside” the cosmos and not influenced by its motion. In short: the best Dingle’s detractors can do is to obfuscate the affair and to fob him off with a Jekyll-and-Hyde device. And it is to their credit that all of them in their answer-no-answer game have shied away from the mortal sin of mixing metaphysics and orthophysics. Martin Gardner excepted, that is!